The present invention relates to expandable medical balloons and methods of making the same.
Expandable medical balloons are employed in a variety of medical procedures including plain old balloon angioplasty (FOB A) as well as for delivery of medical devices to the treatment site such as stent delivery.
Medical applications wherein a balloon is employed intraluminally such as for POBA and stent delivery can be demanding applications due to the extremely small vessels, and the tortuous and long distances the catheter may travel to the treatment site.
For applications where the lesion in the vessel is highly resistant and focalized, such as at the center of a bend in the body vessel, a reduction in burst pressure can be seen with single layer and with dual layer balloons, as well as micro tearing on the exterior of the balloon as a result of localized stress.
Such issues can be even more pronounced when dilatation and/or stenting is being done in the peripheral vasculature.
Compounding the issue even more is that it is typically desirable that the balloon be thin wailed, while still maintaining high strength as most commonly measured by hoop strength or pressure at burst, be relatively inelastic, and have predictable inflation properties.
Inelasticity is desirable to allow for easy control of the diameter, but some elasticity is desirable to enable the surgeon to vary the balloon's diameter as required to treat individual lesions. Suitably, small variations in pressure should not cause wide variation in balloon diameter.
It can be difficult to achieve an excellent balance of properties with a single polymer material. Therefore, a variety of polymer blends and multiple layer polymer balloons have been developed over the years.
There remains a need in the art, however, for an expandable medical balloon having an excellent balance of physical properties.
Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.